adding the functionality to be able to use gated hf models.

[themaverick]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
Nowhere is the codebase using any environment variables. (eg. huggingface token). when you try to use a gated repo, it throws the "handle_name_conflict" error which is misleading.

Describe the solution you'd like
load the environment variable (hf token) before downlaoding any model.

Additional context
would definitely improve the user experience.